McClung C Robertson
Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Biology (Basel). 2019 Mar 12;8(1):14. doi: 10.3390/biology8010014.
It has been nearly 300 years since the first scientific demonstration of a self-sustaining circadian clock in plants. It has become clear that plants are richly rhythmic, and many aspects of plant biology, including photosynthetic light harvesting and carbon assimilation, resistance to abiotic stresses, pathogens, and pests, photoperiodic flower induction, petal movement, and floral fragrance emission, exhibit circadian rhythmicity in one or more plant species. Much experimental effort, primarily, but not exclusively in , has been expended to characterize and understand the plant circadian oscillator, which has been revealed to be a highly complex network of interlocked transcriptional feedback loops. In addition, the plant circadian oscillator has employed a panoply of post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, including alternative splicing, adjustable rates of translation, and regulated protein activity and stability. This review focuses on our present understanding of the regulatory network that comprises the plant circadian oscillator. The complexity of this oscillatory network facilitates the maintenance of robust rhythmicity in response to environmental extremes and permits nuanced control of multiple clock outputs. Consistent with this view, the clock is emerging as a target of domestication and presents multiple targets for targeted breeding to improve crop performance.
自首次科学证明植物中存在自我维持的昼夜节律时钟以来，已经过去了近300年。很明显，植物具有丰富的节律性，植物生物学的许多方面，包括光合光捕获和碳同化、对非生物胁迫、病原体和害虫的抗性、光周期花诱导、花瓣运动和花香释放，在一种或多种植物物种中表现出昼夜节律性。主要（但不限于）在[此处原文缺失具体信息]进行了大量实验工作，以表征和理解植物昼夜节律振荡器，现已发现它是一个由相互连锁的转录反馈环组成的高度复杂网络。此外，植物昼夜节律振荡器采用了一系列转录后调控机制，包括可变剪接、可调节的翻译速率以及受调控的蛋白质活性和稳定性。本综述重点关注我们目前对构成植物昼夜节律振荡器的调控网络的理解。这种振荡网络的复杂性有助于在应对极端环境时维持稳健的节律性，并允许对多个时钟输出进行细微控制。与此观点一致，生物钟正成为驯化的目标，并为定向育种提供多个靶点以提高作物性能。
